Crowd control
Crowd Control refers to spells and abilities with limit an opponent's ability to fight, and is abbreviated CC. CC abilities are used to reduce the number of mobs that the group fight at once. Types of CC include Charm, Daze, Fear, Root, Sleep, Slow, Snare, and Stun. = Crowd Control Ability Comparison By Class = Here is a breakdown on crowd control by class: Druid Hibernate is used to put beasts or dragonkin to sleep and works just like polymorph; hit the mob and they wake up. Many players do not even realize that druids can do this skill. This is the only known Crowd Control spell that can affect a dragonkin, which makes them invaluable in certain instances. In outdoor zones druids can also use Entangling Roots to keep a mob at a distance for a short time. Damage done to the rooted mob increases the chance of them breaking free early. A druid also has tanking ability (taking damage and taunting) while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form. The effectiveness of this tanking depends on the Druid's gear and talent build. Hunter The hunter has a huge array of crowd control abilities, giving the hunter the potential to be highly influential in altering the course of combat. Sleep Effects *Freezing Trap is placed on the ground prior to combat and puts the first enemy that walks over the trap to freeze. The duration lasts up to 20 seconds but it can be extended with the talent Clever Traps. This is effective on virtually every type of mob, even most minor bosses, e.g. Highlord Omokk and Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin. Although a Hunter can only place a trap when out of combat, a second trap can be placed after the first has triggered by using Feign Death to drop out of combat. This can increase the duration of crowd control by immediately re-freezing the mob in the second trap. *Wyvern Sting is a shot/spell that puts a mob to sleep for 12 seconds. When the mob awakens, it will get a DoT that does Nature damage over the next 12 seconds. This is a tier 7 Survival Talent so not every Hunter will have this spell. Aggro Control *Feign Death - allows a hunter to drop out of combat, thus resetting the threat level that the hunter has on a mob. On success the mob then attacks the player or pet with the second most threat, hence caution should be used when using this as that may be a healer. *Disengage - Melee ability that attempts to take the hunter out of combat with a mob. *Distracting Shot - Ranged shot that cause threat, typically used to pull aggro off another player. Pet abilities: *Growl - auto cast that increases the threat level of a pet on a mob. *Cower - auto cast that decreases threat level of a pet on a mob. Snare, Root, and Stun *Frost Traps trigger an area of effect snare that slows movement of all enemies in the radius of the trap. It should also be noted that with the Survival talent Entrapment, all Frost, Immolation, and Explosion traps have a 20% chance to immobilize the target upon triggering. *Concussive Shot - ranged attack that slows a target for 4 seconds, with talents it may be upgraded to give a 20% chance of stunning the target for 3 seconds. *Wing Clip - melee attack that slows a target for 10 seconds. With talent points placed into Improved Wing Clip, Wing Clip has a Proc to immobilize the target for 5 seconds. *Scatter Shot - short-ranged attack that disorients the target for 4 seconds. The effect is nearly identical to that of a Rogue's Blind ability. *Counterattack - a Survival talent that causes damage and roots the target for 5 seconds. Fear *Scare Beast Mage Mages have the ability to Polymorph humanoid enemies, turning them into sheep for up to 50 seconds at level 60. While polymorphed, enemies regenerate health quickly. Frost Nova roots nearby enemies in place for up to 8 seconds, and deals a small amount of damage. This spell is commonly used before using Arcane Explosion and other AoE attacks to maximize the number of targets hit. Much of the Frost talent tree adds crowd-control-esque bonuses to frost damage spells, such as Frostbite and Improved Blizzard. Also there is frost talent Ice Block which will protect mage from any damage for 10 seconds and will remove mage from agro table for that period of time, but mage can not move or cast spells. Ice Block has cooldown of 5 minutes. * Polymorph * Frost Nova Paladin Paladins are a mixed bag of crowd control, with a variety of abilities to both control aggro and bubbles prevent their damage (see Paladin for more info on shields). A paladin has two direct Crowd Control abilities. Turn Undead is a medium duration Fear Effect (albeit only castable on Undead creeps; not players). Hammer of Justice is a stun ability with a 1-minute cooldown. Blessing of Salvation is a very indirect crowd control, lowering the amount of threat a blessed party member generates. Righteous Fury does the opposite for the paladin's holy damage sources, increasing the threat they generate. Paladins can also get Repentance as a talent from the Retribution tree. It is a 6 second sleep, has a 20 yard range and a 1-minute cooldown. Paladins have, beginning at level 22, Seal of Justice which has a chance to stun the enemy for 2 seconds. The corresponding judgement prevents the target from fleeing. This judgement is very important in instances. Priest Psychic Scream is an instant-cast AoE fear with a 5 target limit at level 60. With a 30 second cooldown, it's the only escape spell available to priests in PvP combat. It is never used in instances though, because the feared monster will probably aggro more monsters. Mind Control (MC) is a channeled spell which transfers control to an enemy humanoid to the caster. During this time, the caster stands in place cannot use their own spells, and will lose channelling time if struck in combat. When the MC target is a mob, the caster gains access to select abilities that the mob may have. These can include standard attacks, buffs, or special abilities. Mind controlling an enemy player does not give access to any abilities other than auto-attack. MC on players is more commonly used to plunge enemies into lava in Blackrock Mountain or off of the cliff in the Arathi Basin Lumber Mill. Priests also have Shackle Undead, which roots an undead enemy in place and prevents him from attacking. * Psychic Scream * Mind Control * Shackle Undead Rogue Rogues have many short-term crowd control abilities at their disposal, primarily making use of stun effects at melee range with Gouge and Kidney Shot. While these short-term abilities may be used to eliminate the opponent's ability to move or attack, stun locking generally requires the full attention of the rogue, as combo points must be built up for Kidney Shot. Sap is a long-term (up to 45s) single-target incapacitate effect which may be used versus out-of-combat humanoids within melee range. The Improved Sap talent gives a chance that the rogue will return to being stealthed after a Sap. Blind is a disorient effect with at 10-yard range. * Blind * Gouge * Kidney Shot Shaman A well-placed Earthbind totem or Frost Shock can temporarily snare mobs at critical moments. Warlock Seduction is used by the succubus pet and works much like Polymorph: Hit the humanoid mob and they drop out of seduction. Seduction only affects humanoids, and the succubus channels this spell. Banish can remove a demon or elemental from a fight for a limited time. The demon will be immune to damage and other effects while banished so it can not be breaked and it can not be re-banished. However, there is a chance that the banish breaks by itself. A warlock can only banish one demon or elemental target at a time. Enslave Demon can be used to charm one demon for up to five minutes, although doing so will cause any summoned pet the warlock has out to be dismissed. Fear only works on one target at a time. On the other hand, Howl of Terror fears five targets from the warlock's vicinity for a shorter duration than Fear. Even so, a warlock can keep at least two monsters running at once with Fear; fearing the first, then the second when the first is some distance away (breaking the fear spell on the first) then re-fearing the first when he gets back, causing a sort of fear relay that takes a lot of the Warlock's attention. Death Coil is similar to a very short Fear, but it is an instantaneous spell. Warrior Warriors lack much crowd control, short of Intimidating Shout, which is an AoE fear in which the warrior's target is not affected by a fear effect, rather taunting it. Also available are the single-target snare Hamstring and the talent-based AoE daze Piercing Howl. Also available are the short term Charge and Intercept stuns, as well as the talent-based Concussion Blow and Mace Specialization stuns. While it can be said that warriors use aggro management to prevent others from being attacked, this does not qualify as Crowd Control, as the enemies' ability to do combat is unchanged. * Intimidating Shout * Hamstring * Piercing Howl * Charge * Intercept * Concussion Blow Engineers Goblin Rocket Helm, Various Bombs. Also they can control mechanical mobs by Gnomish Universal Remote device. Category:Combat Category:Partying Category:Game Terms